Saturday, January 05, 2013

Steve Buckley joins Sports Tonight to discuss the 2013 candidates for the Baseball Hall of Fame and asks if anyone should be inducted this year.

Baseballthinkfactory.org currently projects no player will garner the 75% of votes necessary for election into the Hall of Fame.

The last time no candidate won the necessary 75% was 1996, and Buckley says the HOF voters that he talks to says it’s likely it could happen again this year.

There are a number of players who Buckley believes will ultimately earn induction, but most of the players who would normally be considered a ‘slam dunk’ are those tainted by the steroid era and are therefore unlikely to garner even a significant percentage of votes.

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I was looking at the class of 2014 list...I don't know how I missed Glavine and Thomas. I know when he retired, most people (writers included) called Thomas a slam-dunk, but with all this 'noise', I'm beginning to wonder.

Baseballthinkfactory.org currently projects no player will garner the 75% of votes necessary for election into the Hall of Fame.

We are projecting nothing. If we are going to be cited in the media but make no effort to ensure the media cites things remotely correctly, we should stop them.

I appreciate the effort that Repoz puts into this. I understand it provides info people want. But if this is the attention it is going to draw, we are going to look silly.

I vote we stop doing the HoF ballot gizmo. Please at least change the intro to make it abundantly clear that this is an actual count of published votes, not a projection and that this is known to be a biased, self-selected sample.

I know such a warning will be about as effective as ZiPS' old "this is not a playing time calculator" statement but please at least make the effort.

Sorry "them" was referring to HoF ballot gizmos, not the press. But, yes, if we stop the gizmos we will stop the press from citing the gizmo incorrectly.

I wouldn't count on your anti-Gizmo campaign picking up a lot of steam. I suspect that, to Jim, the BTF mentions on MLB Network and the like more than offset the fact the Gizmo might be misused on occasion. Just a guess.

We are projecting nothing. If we are going to be cited in the media but make no effort to ensure the media cites things remotely correctly, we should stop them.

I appreciate the effort that Repoz puts into this. I understand it provides info people want. But if this is the attention it is going to draw, we are going to look silly.

Well, there is no "we." There's a collection of the ballots of a bunch of writers. But yeah, it is an implicit projection. The HOF Gizmo says Biggio has 67.3% of the vote, with around 18% reporting. Repoz's intro says "Cooperstown = Ghost town %." That's a projection. Repoz doesn't list an uncertainty index, or try to account for votes not published based on history, but he certainly does imply that he believes that no one will get in.

I vote we stop doing the HoF ballot gizmo. Please at least change the intro to make it abundantly clear that this is an actual count of published votes, not a projection and that this is known to be a biased, self-selected sample.

I know such a warning will be about as effective as ZiPS' old "this is not a playing time calculator" statement but please at least make the effort.

Why? If the MSM wants to mis-quote it, then they can. Who gives a flying ####? The conversation is better with the HOF Gizmo. There's more data, more centrally located. Who cares if we're wrong and Jack Morris sails in with 90% of the vote? What prestige does the website lose?

Stop doing something because some in the media can't digest it properly? That ludicrous. It is exactly what it professes to be: a tally of those who have made their ballot public. If the media misrepresents (which they will, being the American media) it, that's their issue.

It is exactly what it professes to be: a tally of those who have made their ballot public.

That's not what it professes to be since it doesn't profess to be anything. Yes, if you dig into comments and such you'll find out what it is.

If the media misrepresents (which they will, being the American media) it, that's their issue.

It is ... until it is hilariously wrong and held up for ridicule as another statnerd idiocy.

It is not a projection. How can there possibly be any objection to clearly stating what it is and isn't in the introduction? How can there possibly be any objection to clearly stating that it should not be used as a projection for who's going in?

C'mon folks, this wave of attention was started by the idiots at deadspin. Best to make it clear that we, the "thinking fans", have some standards, understand what a projection is and understand what a biased sample is.

he certainly does imply that he believes that no one will get in.

Well, maybe. Repoz has never been one to let facts or personal opinion get in the way of a joke, pithy comment, obscure cultural reference or wry commentary on the social milieu. Rightly so.

What prestige does the website lose?

Well, again, if bbtf is "projecting" that nobody is getting in but then somebody does, the bbtf "projection" will be wrong. Not as hilariously wrong as Rove came across but wrong. You think that helped Rove's prestige? You think it did BPro any good when they predicted the White Sox to 72 wins (or whatever) then they won the WS? If you have your name behind a prediction of the future, you ought to at least believe in your own method.

And if I were an owner of bbtf I might be concerned that this is being cited as a BBTF projection when it's not. Presumably they don't want "BBTF called Jack Morris an embarrassment of epic proportions and said that the HoF is irrelevant today upon news of Morris's election" (surely someone here will post something to that effect). Of course, maybe not as long as the awesome ad money for 1 tip for a tiny belly keeps rolling in. (What is with these ad people -- maybe it's because I'm in Oz but I've been getting the same damn ads for must be 2 years now. Surely there are some new internet scams I can be suckered into.)

Jeff Kent gets added to the pile-up of "Not an HOFer..well...just because."?

Jeff Kent is gonna get a lot of steroid suspicion because his peak coincided with Bonds' on the Giants. And, as we all know, second basemen generally get screwed in the voting. Also Kent's only borderline by the numbers anyway with 51 bWAR. His HOM stats are good enough though.

It'll be interesting to see, but I think he'll get screwed. Probably will be one and done if no one gets elected this year.

Just prior to announcing the Gizmo and its Friday morning figures (I don't recall him describing it as a projection, but frankly, most everyone knows what it is, or can figure it out, and hardly anyone cares about such shorthanded commentary anyway), Brian Kenney described BTF as an excellent or outstanding web site or some such superlative. The idea that Jim and co. would rather trade that kind of exposure because some people might get the wrong idea about what the Gizmo is doing is patently absurd.

Walt, I'm with SoSH (god help me). The gizmo is a fun and useful tool and certainly provides some insight into what the final results might be. If it is misused by outsiders, who cares? We aren't deciding whether to send troops into war here.

While I agree even a 15 max ballot would be beneficial, that's not going to stop Joe Bagadonut from returning an empty ballot or only having two names.

Exactly. The only reason there's a pileup now is because voters in the recent past haven't even used the 10 spots they have, and that not going to change wit 15. Adding more votes might save a couple guys with no shot of election from falling off the ballot immediately, but that's about it.

This is a lot of liberal claptrap designed to depress the "doddering old coot" vote and swing the election. If you want to know what's really going on, check out the website I started 9 minutes ago, http://www.UnskewedBBTFGizmo.com

Has anyone broached the subject that, as the pile-up gets higher and higher (Viva's notion that Jeff Kent might be one and done made me think of this),that we will start to see voters intentionally leaving off slam-dunk candidates to vote for guys who might fall off otherwise?

EX: "I didn't vote for Maddux because he's going to get in anyway and I wanted to make sure Jeff Kent got 5%"

They will be changing the rules-be it making ballots unlimited (or 15 max), or something more drastic. Hell the voting pool could be extensively reworked.

Where can I go to bet money against this? The HOF won't make a single change to the voting procedures on account of one unproductive election. I'd even bet against any substantial change after two (which as we've noted Maddux is likely to avert anyway.)